June 2007

You gotta love how the free market works when left alone by the Government!

Just as Frontline and others are demanding that the government has to intervene in the 700 MHz auction to "create" a third broadband pipe, the free market finds another way to solve these market problems without the Government.

One of the most significant developments in the spectrum world today was not the hot air at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, but what happened in the free market -- DirecTV and Echostar signing agreements with Clearwire to sell their WiMax broadband service.

The following is the comment I posted to Google's first "authentic" blog post on net neutrality in Google's new public policy blog:

Welcome to the blogosphere! We congratulate Google for joining the NN debate more openly using your own "authentic" voice and not those of your surrogates. It is also about time for Google to be more specific on the issue of net neutrality.

Reuters did a decent article on Google and growing privacy concerns about Google practices.

• My beef is with the editor's choice of words in the title.
• Either the editor does not know the real definition of "paranoia" or the editor was trying to cut the knees out from under the reporter's story and soften the article.
• I've included the definitions of "paranoia" and "fear" from www.dictionary.com at the bottom of this post.

"Paranoia" is either a mental disorder or a baseless suspicion.

• I don't think Reuters meant to imply that an American is mentally ill if he/she fears that their privacy is being invaded by Google recording and storing all of their searches and click paths, electronically reading all their g-mails, and surveilling many people's lives through Street View cameras.
• As you remember, anybody that stood up to the proverbial "Big Brother" in George Orwell's 1984, was also accused of being ill.

Let's keep an eye on Google's spinmeisters to see if this was just one editor who chose the wrong word, or if it is part of Google's talking points to defend itself against privacy concerns.

• My suspicion, is that the word came from Google.
• Oops! Does that candor make me paranoid?

par·a·noi·a –noun

Anyone concerned about their privacy should read the GREAT article in PC World on Google and privacy, and in particular should look at the call out box to see the risk about all that Google knows about you.  

• The article does a great job of explaining all the ways that others and the government could easily access tons of private information on you via Google's huge cache of private information on you.
• Google is quickly becoming the enabler of George Orwell's feared "Big Brother" in "1984."

Let's see if the mainstream press picks up on this obvious and interesting populist story... it has legs.